


Nume: Ten Years Thence

by Neshomeh



Series: Response Center 999: Supernumerary and Ilraen [11]
Category: Protectors of the Plot Continuum
Genre: PPC Cafeteria, PPC Interlude, Ten Years Hence (sort of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2019-04-19 17:17:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14242080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neshomeh/pseuds/Neshomeh
Summary: In which Area 51 is real.





	Nume: Ten Years Thence

**Author's Note:**

> **Timeline:** February 2013; ten years since February 2003.  
>  **Rating:** PG/K+ - Cake for everyone!  
>  **Beta:** Phobos.  
>  **Cameos:** Agents Decima and Sedri.

Agent Supernumerary sat at a small circular table in the middle of the Cafeteria, alone. Most people who wanted to be alone went straight for the corners and edges, so inevitably they were almost always crowded. Nume didn't even try for them anymore. People tended to avoid him just fine no matter where he sat, and save for the odd rampaging bear, he could enjoy his god-awful coffee and write in peace.

Except today.

"Hey, Nume!" Jennifer Robinson plunked down into the seat next to him.

<Hello, Nume!> Ilraen lifted the chair on his other side out of the way and stepped into its place.

They both looked inordinately cheerful. Nume felt something wither inside him, and his expression fell to match. "What the hell is this?" He glared at Jenni, who was the first to react.

"You mean you don't know?" She made a show of being aghast. "Typical. Just like a man!"

"That's sexist, and I have no idea what you're talking about. Spit it out or get lost. I'm busy."

"It's our anniversary! Well, all right, just your anniversary," she added, relenting. "I can't believe you don't know what day it is."

"Well, of course _I_ know," he spat. "I didn't think _you_ knew, since I never told you. Either of you." He turned his glare on his partner.

Ilraen just shrugged and squinted and waggled his stalk-eyes in what Nume took to be the Andalite equivalent of a shit-eating grin.

Jenni answered gleefully in his place. "Ilraen figured it out. If you live with someone for six years, you're bound to pick up on his habits, even infrequent ones. Apparently, once every year, you bugger off to sit here with that toxic sludge they're calling coffee for a few hours, you have a single standard-sized bar of Hershey's, then you swing by the Postal Department, and you return home with a book published at least twenty years ago. I knew it couldn't be your birthday, because you did tell me when that is, so we realized what it had to be. Nume . . . ." Her voice abruptly dropped into tones of awe. "You've been here _ten years_. Do you realize how special that is? Only a handful of agents ever make it past _one_."

Throughout this tale, Nume had passed through disbelief, shock, annoyance, and anger, and he finally settled on disgust. "For the love of—okay, first of all, no, it damn well isn't. Why would you put that word to any PPC agent, let alone me? Second of all" —he rounded on Ilraen— "I . . . I don't even know what to say to you. You've been _spying_ on me?"

<No!> Ilraen answered quickly, holding up his hands. <I merely . . . happened to go the same way one year, and . . . . Yes. I followed you.> His ears lowered and his stalk-eyes drooped. <You see, despite the fact that you are my partner and I have known you for more than six years, I know so very little _about_ you. I was curious. >

"Yes, that's one of your worst qualities." Nume crossed his arms.

"Hey, be nice," Jenni said. "It's not his fault you force people to go to absurd lengths to be your friends."

"I don't force anyone to do anything," he shot back. "I didn't ask you people to be my friends. I do distinctly recall asking for my privacy on numerous occasions, though, which I would expect my self-proclaimed friends to respect. What is so frelling hard about that?"

"Well, you're fascinating." Jenni grinned. "Irresistible, really, like a whole room full of big, shiny red buttons that say Do Not Push."

"Ugh." He rolled his eyes.

<I really am just curious,> Ilraen said for his part. <I try not to push your buttons.>

"You mean except when you do it deliberately? Don't think I don't—wait, you just used an idiom. Correctly." He glanced at Jenni for confirmation.

She nodded. "Yep. Perfect tens, Ilraen. Way to run with a setup." She gave the Andalite two thumbs up.

<Why, thank you!> He returned the gesture.

Nume shook his head. "Just bizarre. But, look, to get back to the point: Go away? Now?" He made shooing motions at them.

"Sorry, no can do." Jenni leaned over to bump shoulders with him. "It would be criminal to let this occasion pass unmarked, and we're here to make sure you don't escape. By the way, what are you writing? Did I see something about Area 51?"

Nume snatched up the papers on the table in front of him, crinkling some in the process. "Lady, do you even know the definition of the word 'private'? Butt out!"

<Perhaps it would be expedient just to tell us?> Ilraen suggested. <That way, you would end the mystery and take out all the fun.>

"He's right, you know," Jenni said, leaning back in her chair in smug satisfaction. "People who spill their entire life story at the drop of a hat are boring."

Nume sat a moment in gaping silence. Finally, he shook his head, dropped the papers back to the tabletop and threw up his hands. "Fine! You've already crashed my very personal, private ritual, so fine. You win. Since you _must_ know, I'm writing a letter. A long letter by necessity, since I only write once a year. To my folks," he finished on a reluctant grumble.

<Oh, I see! Regular correspondence with one's family unit is important to many people,> Ilraen said as if reciting. <I was not sure you had a family unit. So many of us here do not.>

"Of course I do," Nume grumped. "I had a life before the PPC. _You_ knew that," he added to Jenni. She had gone uncharacteristically quiet, and it was unnerving him just a little.

"You never, ever talk about them," she said wonderingly. "You mentioned they were doctors, or one of them was a nurse, or something, but . . . you don't talk about them. But you've been writing every year, on the anniversary of your disappearance? That's . . . something." She didn't sound quite sure what.

He rolled his eyes again. "Spare me, will you? We're not in session here. You wanted to know what I was writing, I told you, end of talk."

"Why Area 51, though?" Jenni asked, displaying her remarkable talent for ignoring hints to shut up and drop it.

<Is that not the focus of a number of World One conspiracy theories regarding 'space aliens'?> The Andalite tilted his head.

"Yes," said Nume, looking determinedly at nothing.

"So you're telling your parents about . . . " Jenni broke off as a grin stole across her face. "No, I can't guess. This is too much. Spill!"

"I . . . ." He took a deep breath and heaved it back out again. "I . . . _may_ have told them I was shanghaied into the CIA," he muttered, still staring at a fixed point in the middle distance. "On account of my brain. It makes a good cover, since it's not like I can explain what I do here. But . . . I _may_ have implied that certain things I was into as a kid are actually real and not just made-up nonsense and/or the lies of Satan." By this point he was blushing about as deeply as it was possible for a human being to blush.

"Nume." Jenni's grin was firmly entrenched now. "Tell me the truth. Were you a little sixties proto-Mulder?"

He gave her a look of pure withering misery.

"You _were!_ " She clapped her hands softly together.

"I hate you so much."

<Did you tell them about me, then?> Ilraen jumped in. <That is, I understand you could not tell them much, but . . . .> He looked hopeful.

Nume raised an eyebrow at him. "Why do you care?"

<Well . . . you and I are not unlike family in some respects, as I understand the concept.>

"Oh, brother."

<Yes, exactly!>

"No! I didn't mean—Jesus Christ. Never mind." He pulled off his glasses and dug the heel of his hand into the knot between his eyebrows. "You guys are killing me. Is busting my chops all day your idea of honoring my decade of service?"

<Oh, no, no! Do not worry. This was just the distraction,> Ilraen explained.

Nume stopped kneading. "The what?"

"The distraction," Jenni repeated. "See, we had to keep you from leaving until everyone could get here. And now they have, so we can stop."

He couldn't open his eyes. "Oh, no. Please, god, no."

"Oh, yes," said a new voice from behind him. "So, ten years, huh? I have to say, sweetie, I'm impressed. I didn't think you had that kind of stamina!"

"Decima," Nume muttered. "Nice to know I can count on a Bad Slasher I met once to not have my back in any way whatsoever."

"Sure thing!"

He finally forced himself to crack his eyelids and take his first fuzzy look around. The faces of Jenni and Ilraen were blurred, but he could see well enough to tell that the tables around him had filled in with people he recognized, and that he disliked all of them intensely. He was also pretty sure someone was putting a large three-tiered cake in front of him.

"Convenient Cake!" announced the bearer. He recognized the voice—Agent Sedri had assisted him with a mission once, back in 2008. "I know you'll like it, because it's everyone's favorite flavor. It's made with plotholes!"

"Plothole cake is worst cake," Nume said feebly.

With the cake in place, Jenni climbed up on her chair for a commanding view of the room. "All right, everyone!" she called. "I trust that most of you are here because you got my e-mail, so you already know what this is about. If not, welcome to Agent Supernumerary's anniversary party! He's been an agent for _ten years_ , people!"

A susurrus of appreciative murmurs and scattered applause went through the crowd. Nume sank lower in his chair and covered the top of his head.

"Yeah!" Jenni nodded, taking in the whole group. "Impressive, right? To commence celebrating this momentous achievement, I hope you'll all join me in a round of 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.' If you don't know the words, just make some up! _Fooor . . . !_ "

As the Cafeteria burst, or rather staggered, into song, the man of the hour felt the last of his willpower leave him, and his forehead hit the table with a solid _thump_. Sadly, it was not enough to render him unconscious, and he was forced to eat cake and shake hands and listen to insipid congratulatory speech after insipid congratulatory speech, all led by his so-called friends.

All in all, it was pretty much the best tenth anniversary he could have expected.

**Author's Note:**

> There was also a role-play associated with the original posting of this story to the PPC Posting Board. [Please read the RP log on my website](http://starshadowhall.tripod.com/ppc/rc999/07i3ntyt.html#rp), since it has formatting I can't replicate here. Thanks!
> 
> [Area 51 truly is real](http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/us/area-51-documents/). The US government declassified its existence in August 2013. Learning that, coupled with inspiration from _The X-Files'_ season four episode "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man," is what finally gave me a hook for writing this story.
> 
> If you're not intimately familiar with _The X-Files_ , the episode features the most mysterious recurring antagonist of the series as a younger man, trying to validate his crushingly top-secret life by getting the bizarre events he's witnessed published as pulpy sci-fi novels. Being a pathetic writer, he doesn't succeed; but I thought to myself, "Haha, I can totally see Nume writing pathetic pulpy sci-fi novels, giant geek that he is."
> 
> When I learned about Area 51 being declassified, I thought to myself, "Wow, just imagine what you could do in the past if you had that kind of knowledge from the future," which led to "Why, a PPC agent could write some really convincing made-up letters about their life based on news from the future, which they can totally get because of portals and HQ being all timey-wimey." I'd been pondering off and on whether or not Nume keeps in touch with his parents for a long time, and the pieces just fell into place.
> 
> And that is how Nume came to be writing a pulpy sci-fi novel about being a secret agent in the form of letters to his family, and why this story wasn't written until months after it takes place.
> 
> Incidentally, Jenni also joined the PPC in 2003, but I don't know exactly when it happened because I don't remember exactly when I joined. (I picked February for Nume based on school semesters and when I'd determined his birthday to be.) She probably had a quiet little celebration in FicPsych, and I'm not planning a story about it because it would be redundant and not nearly as fun to write as this was.
> 
> **On the timeline:** Due to the party RP being set in February 2013 but actually taking place in February 2014, this event may seem to be out of place in relation to other events in certain people's timelines. This is both true and not true. In Headquarters, everyone is on a relative timeline; the dates assigned to it are quite arbitrary. Therefore, it's perfectly reasonable for one day in February 2013 to come after October 2013 for Ilraen, Anneli, and Cindy, but fall where you'd expect it for everyone else. These things happen. If it hurts your brain, it's probably best not to think about it. ^_~


End file.
